“Can I go to the pool 10 days after stent surgery?”

Well technically speaking, deploying a stent in a coronary artery, or any other artery for matter, is not considered a true surgical procedure. We do our work through catheters after we insert sheaths in the radial artery of the wrist or the femoral artery of the groin. It all starts with a needle puncture. And if it is a straightforward stenosis in a favorable location of the artery (a mid-RCA 80% discreet lipid filled soft plaque) the whole procedure might take 30 minutes or less. And most patients go home in a couple of hours. Complex lesions in the ostium of the left-sided coronaries (LAD, LCX) are more high risk and the patient may get kept in the hospital overnight. Hard plaque made predominantly of calcium , or completely occluded arteries (CTO), are much riskier with a higher complication rate because we have to drill/chisel through the lesion with an atherectomy device. We use clinical judgement, but would lean towards keeping those patients in the hospital overnight. Each case is a little different, but most patients can go swimming within a day or two. Particularly an elective, uncomplicated, outpatient case in a stable patient done radially with no significant co-morbidities and no procedural complications. The patient who is admitted with an acute coronary syndrome or acute infarction ( heart attack), with or without hemodynamic instability, may be taken to the Cath lab emergently , or at least urgently the next morning, will be in the hospital longer. They have some degree of acute muscle damage even when the procedure is successfully. Their heart damage was the result of complete thrombotic obstruction of the artery as a result of acute plaque rupture (platelets in the bloodstream aggregate or clump over the site of the plaque rupture which then completely occludes the artery). Once we re-establish blood flow by percutaneous intervention and stent deployment, the flood of blood to the ischemic portion of cardiac muscle causing myocardial stunning . That portion of the muscle will be dysfunctional for up to 6 weeks. Most eventually normalize. But the recovery from even a small to moderate myocardial infarction is 4-6 weeks. So they wont physically be able to swim after discharge for several weeks. They dont have the energy or stamina. The actual procedure doesnt determine when they can swim, but the clinical scenario. In general, from a wound and procedural standpoint, a patient could swim within 2 days of discharge ( maybe even the next day).